The present invention relates to a recording and reproducing device, and a recording and reproducing method, and more particularly, to the recording and reproducing device and the recording and reproducing method for reading sound signals which have been recorded on a recording medium (a disk, for example), recording the signals which have been read on a recording unit (for example, hard disk drive, hereinafter referred to as an HDD), and at the same time, reproducing them.
Conventionally, there has been proposed a recording and reproducing device provided with an HDD having a large capacity as a recording unit, and adapted to reproduce sound signals which have been read by a CD deck or the like, and at the same time, to record those sound signals which have been read on the HDD (Reference should be made to Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-269911A, for example). The recording and reproducing device of this type is so constructed that the sound signals recorded on a disk will be read at a high speed and recorded on the HDD, and the sound signals recorded on the HDD will be reproduced at an ordinary reproducing speed thereby to perform recording process and reproducing process of the sound signals at the same time.
FIG. 1 schematically shows relationship between the sound signals which will be read from the HDD to be reproduced, and the sound signals which will be recorded on the HDD, in the conventional recording and reproducing device. Referring to FIG. 1, time relation between the reproducing process (reading from the HDD) and the recording process (recording on the HDD) in the conventional device will be described. It is to be noted that in the following description, music and songs are objects to be processed, and that reproducing times are four minutes for a first song, six minutes for a second song, eight minutes for a third song, and eight minutes for a fourth song.
At the outset, in FIG. 1(A), attention should be paid to a time point a at which the reproduction of the sound signals of the first song recorded on the HDD has finished. In case where recording on the HDD is set at a double speed, recording of the first song has finished and the second song is on its way of recording at the time point a. In case where recording on the HDD is set at a quadruple speed, recording up to the second song has finished and the third song is on its way of recording at the time point a. In other words, in view of the time relation between the recording and the reproduction, the recording always precedes the reproduction, and the larger a degree of precedence is, the more merits can be obtained in the following respects.
Specifically, in order to temporarily store the sound signals which have been read from a CD reproducing section, a so-called retrying process that when an overflow has happened in a recording buffer which exists between the CD reproducing section and the HDD, the sound signals in the recording buffer will be destroyed, and the sound signals will be again read from a head of the recorded song to be stored in the recording buffer will be conducted. For example, in FIG. 1(A), in case where the retrying process has occurred at a time point b, the sound signals will be again read from a head of the second song in case of double speed recording, and from a head of the third song in case of quadruple speed recording, and will start to be stored in the recording buffer. The overflow represents a state that the sound signals which are excessively accumulated in the HDD as the recording unit exceed the storage capacity of the recording buffer in a case where the sound signal temporarily stored in the recording buffer can not be recorded on the HDD due to inaccessible state to the HDD by vibration or the like.
However, since the recording on the HDD precedes the reproduction, as described above, it is possible to prevent a dropout of sound in the song, even though an overflow has happened, by continuously reading the sound signals of the first song which has been recorded on the HDD.
As described above, in case where the recording on the HDD sufficiently precedes the reproduction, an overflow in the recording buffer, that is, phenomenon of the retrying process can be overcome, at an enhanced degree. For this reason, it has been required for the CD reproducing section to read the sound signals at a higher speed, such as the quadruple speed, eightfold speed, sixteen-fold speed and so on. However, in the recording and reproducing device having the above described structure, when an overflow has happened in the recording buffer due to defective access to the HDD by vibration, at a time point c at which the same sound signals as those in the first song which is being reproduced have not yet recorded on the HDD, as shown in FIG. 1(B), the sound signals to be read from the HDD have not been completely recorded on the HDD. Therefore, it has been a problem that there is no sound signal to be read on halfway of the song, and a dropout of sound will happen, because the sound signals in the recording buffer have been destroyed at the retrying process. The same problem may occur in a case where the recording unit except for the HDD is used in the recording and reproducing device.